As humanity ventures into the exploration and commercialization of space, one abiding concern is providing a life sustaining environment. This includes not only accounting for the necessities such as food, water, and breathable oxygen, but also disposal of human waste such as urine.
In the absence of gravity, the process of urinating into a toilet is a bit more difficult to keep some semblance of sanitation. When urinating into a toilet in space (the absence of gravity) there is no natural force that holds the expelled urine into the container, so an artificial force is needed.
Most existing space toilet concepts involve urinating into some sort of vacuum tube that eventually filters the liquid from the air and empties the liquid into a storage container. The difficulty comes in because the quantity of air flow necessary to assure reliable collection of urine creates a flow of mostly air with small amounts of liquid suspended in it, which is difficult to filter in the absence of gravity.
While processing urine and gas in space identifies the need for separation of gas from a gas and liquid mixture, the scope of the invention in general applies to other types of mixtures that do not contain urine. In general, what is needed is a device that can separate the gas from the liquid in a zero gravity environment.